Cardiff University

BA English Literature and Creative Writing

This is a full-time undergraduate degree that takes three years to complete. You will study modules worth a total of 360 credits split evenly over the three years.

You must pass each academic year before proceeding to the next stage of your studies.

The modules shown are an example of the typical curriculum and will be reviewed before the 2024/2025 academic year. The final modules will be published by September 2024.

Year One

Year one is a foundation year, designed to equip you with the skills and practice for advanced study and to give you an overview that will enable you to make informed choices from the modules available in years two and three while laying down the foundations of your engagement with Creative Writing.

You will take three core modules and three optional modules. These will provide you with a solid base for the next two years of your degree by offering the opportunity to develop your critical and creative skills through reading, analysing and producing imaginative work across a wide array of different genres.

Core Modules for Year One

• Creative Reading
• Creative Writing
• Critical Reading and Critical Writing

Optional Modules for Year One

• Drama: Stage and Page
• Star-cross Lovers: the Politics of Desire
• Transforming Visions: Text and Image
• Transgressive Bodies in Medieval Literature
• Ways of Reading

Year Two

In year two you select from a range of period-, genre- or theme-based modules in which you will build on the foundation year, reading a selection of texts in their historical and cultural contexts.

You also continue your studies of Creative Writing within a variety of forms and genres, including fiction, poetry and scriptwriting.

Optional Modules for Year Two

• Style and Genre
• Medieval Arthurian Literature
• Modernist Fictions
• Children's Literature: Form and Function
• Introduction to Romantic Poetry
• African-American Literature
• Imaginary Journeys: More to Huxley
• Modernism and the City
• Gothic Fiction: The Romantic Age
• Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Women Writers
• Girls
• Creative Writing: Experiments in Fiction
• Creative Writing: Poetry l
• Creative Writing: Screenwriting
• Creative Writing: Poetry II
• Creative Writing: The Short Story
• Object Women in Literature and Film
• Epic and Saga
• Creative Writing: Stories from the Real World -- Narrative
• Creative Writing: Playwriting
• Second-generation Romantic Poets
• Gothic Fiction: The Victorians
• Contemporary British Fictions
• Philosophy and Literature
• Shakespeare's Worlds
• Victorian Worlds: Revolution, Disease, Deviance
• International Study Abroad (60 credits) Spring

Year Three

In your final year, you will choose from a range of more specialised modules, allowing you to pursue interests developed in the previous two years. You will engage with current issues in research and scholarship, enabling you further to develop analytical and presentation skills that employers will value, as well as equipping you for postgraduate study.

You also undertake a portfolio dissertation in Creative Writing that complements your work in the English Literature modules and allows you to produce an extended piece of writing in a specialist genre. The dissertation also allows you to develop research and project management skills.

Core Modules for Year Three

• Creative Writing Project

Optional Modules for Year Three

• The Illustrated Book
• Gender and Monstrosity: Late/Neo-Victorian
• Writing Caribbean Slavery
• Utopia: Suffrage to Cyberpunk
• Postcolonial Theory
• Military Masculinities in the Long Nineteenth Century
• Medieval Romance: Monsters and Magic
• American Poetry after Modernism
• John Milton
• The American Short Story
• Apocalypse Then and Now
• Representing Race in Contemporary America
• Experimental Early Modern Drama
• Visuality, Culture and Technology
• Activist Poetry: Protest, Dissent, Resistance
• Contemporary British Political Drama
• Visions of the Future: Climate Change & Fiction
• Encounters With Oil in Literature and Film
• Romantic Circles: Collaboration, Radicalism and Creativity
• Medieval Misfits
• Shakespeare's Fractured Britain

How will I be Assessed?

All English Literature modules offer you the opportunity to undertake unassessed formative work appropriate to the module. Most modules are assessed by essay and/or examination, but some include other forms of assessment such as journal entries, a portfolio, or presentations.

Creative Writing modules are assessed by short portfolios of creative work that include a critical commentary. The assessment strategy is structured to lead you from formative thinking throughout the module towards the production of an informed critical/creative response.

Your final year project consists of a substantial, independently-researched and original portfolio of creative work, produced under the guidance of a member of staff, in the field of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, playwriting, or screenwriting. The portfolio includes a critical commentary on the work produced.

What Skills Will I Practise and Develop?

Knowledge and Understanding

• Awareness of different literary periods, movements and genres and the variety of English literature
• Understanding of the importance of historical and cultural contexts
• Ability to sustain a critical argument that is responsive to the workings of language and literary styles
• Awareness of the bibliographic conventions of the discipline and their role in communicating information
• Knowledge of the critical issues and/or debates surrounding or raised by texts
• Understanding of the shaping effects of historical and cultural circumstances on the production and meaning of texts
• Knowledge of appropriate critical vocabulary and terminology
• An awareness of editorial approaches and processes
• Understanding, through reading and your practice, of the key elements of different forms of writing.
• Ability to produce original literary work in a variety of forms and genres
• An awareness of tone, register, structure, genre and audience in your writing

Intellectual Skills

• Ability to handle complex ideas with clarity
• Ability to analyse and interpret material drawn from a diversity of literary periods
• Ability to apply high-level critical skills of close analysis to literary texts
• Ability to select and organise material purposefully and cogently
• Ability to use the views of others in the development and enhancement of practice; formulate considered practical responses to the critical judgements of others, while developing a generous yet rigorous critical scrutiny in peer review and workshop activities

Professional Practical Skills

• Advanced communication skills (written and oral)
• Ability to give an efficient critical evaluation of documents in various styles
• Ability to give oral and written feedback on others’ work
• Ability to access, use and evaluate electronic data
• Ability to interact effectively with others, in team or group work situations

Transferable Skills

• Ability to handle complex ideas with clarity
• Ability to select and organise material purposefully and cogently
• Plan, organize, and deliver work to a deadline
• Initiate and take responsibility for independent projects
• Respond creatively and imaginatively to research tasks

Our graduates commonly go on to pursue careers in freelance writing, academia, teaching, publishing, arts management and administration, public relations and journalism.

Many employers welcome graduates with high-level literacy skills. Together with such skills, our students develop the kind of insights into the creative process that are valued by business, from design to sales.

Imaginative writing transfers readily into advertising and tourism as well as advertising companies. As a graduate of our School, you will have a portfolio of creative writing to demonstrate to potential employers.

Our graduates find employment in HR, the book trade, and professional areas such as librarianship but also local government and other areas of public life concerned with communication.